Fabian Fagerholm wrote: > Feedback is welcome, and I'm subscribed to debian-boot so please discuss > here. I'm trying to find time to arrange a few more tests within the > next month or so, so that I can see what other flaws emerge.
Thanks for doing the testng (and please send our thanks to your tester).
I really encourage you to do further testing using a CD to install;
installing by booting a CDROM will work on the vast majority of
hardware, including any hardware a true new user would be likely to
have, and it is much less tortuous and error prone. I expect that your
tester would have gotten to at least the base-config process if using a
CD. By the way, if you do test with CDs, please use full-size CDs, and
not the netinst CDs.
I'd think it best to break out the individual points in your summary
into bug reports on the right installer components, and here's some
commentary to that end:
step 2-9: (debian-installer)
I'm a bit suprised to see the user going through all the help in
such detail. This suggests that more online help later on would
be a good thing. We're getting that in the new version of
partman at least.
It also suggests that we should somehow make more clear that you
shouldn't need to read all that stuff unless you're curious, or
something is going wrong, but I am not sure of how to accomplish
that.
step 10: (debian-installer)
It should be possible to reword the prompt on the help screens
to make clearer that enter boots the system. I'll see what I can
do.
step 11: (rootskel-floppy)
I think you're too charitable; many new users would not like the
linux boot text at all. Luckily it's only this in your face on
an install from floppies; normally it flashes by and the installer
loads in seconds.
step 13: (languagechooser)
It's a pity that she did not scroll down and find the fi_FI
entry. I wonder if adding arrows to the scroll bar, or some
other indication that there is more below would have helped
her.
step 17: (countrychooser)
The fact that hitting enter on a continent returns to the menu
is something I have always disliked, but I have no particularly
better idea.
step 18-19: (kbd-chooser)
It's probably a bug that the keyboard selector did not default
to Finnish here.
step 20: (load-floppy)
You're right, that needs to stress that now is the time to
change the floppy. I'll see about fixing this.
step 21: (anna)
This mess has been on my list to fix for a while, but it's
nontrivial. The retreivers need to be extended to have failure
handling capabilities, instead of this generic handler; the
failure handler for the floppy should re-prompt for the floppy
if none was found.
step 22-30: (main-menu)
I've seen users get into this kind of confusion when something
goes wrong and the priority is lowered. Short of avoiding ever
letting things go that badly wrong (which is a noble goal, but
perhaps unobtainable), it's hard to fix it. Note that none of
this is shown to users unless something goes wrong.
On your other comments:
- I agree that cdebconf's multiselct box implementation is confusing.
Luckily we have no multiselct lists in the standard install path
(unless something goes wrong). I would like to see it easier to use,
better key assignments or at least a help bar at the bottom.
(cdebconf)
- Some of your UI ideas are not particularly doable with the current
simple queston and answer, cdebconf-based interface. Some of them can
be approached in spirit, if not in actual UI. (cdebconf)
- Your idea for presenting a list of information the installer needs
(language, country, keyboard) is a good one, and it's similar to an
earlier proposal I made, which would also include some other
information prompted for later. Unfortunatly, it will be a lot of work
to implement this, and I've put off working on my idea until after the
first release. There is still time to do it, I think, if someone is
interested. Plan for a good week's work. (main-menu)
- Indeed we don't display the kernel modules screen on normal installs.
We do display a progress bar that breifly mentions the modules that
are being loaded; while this will contain terms that users are not
familiar with, I think the overall thing is clear, they do not have
to interact with it, and it's essential for debugging when a module
freezes the machine. (hw-detect)
As to your conclusions, I think that you're jumping to conclusions from
one test with floppies. Out of our 300+ installation reports (and the
many more users who have installed without reporting), I think there are
a few that are from users nearly as novice as your tester, and
succeeded. However, they all used CDROMs. I look forward to further
tests.
--
see shy jo
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